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Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, an American engineering treasure and well known image of the grandeur of the United States, started amid civic pleasure, pomp and circumstance on this day in historical past, Jan. 5, 1933.
“The start of construction was met with great delight,” the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District web site notes.
“A celebration at nearby Crissy Field went on for hours with at least 100,000 people in attendance. A festive parade through the Marina District began at 12:45 p.m. Navy planes flew in formation and engineering students carried an 80-foot replica of the bridge.”
The suspension bridge spans the Golden Gate, the slender strait of turbulent water that separates the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco Bay. It connects the City of San Francisco in the south with Marin County to the north.
The Golden Gate Bridge boasted the world’s longest bridge span (4,200 toes) and tallest bridge towers (746 toes) upon its completion. Its size was surpassed by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City in 1964 and by different bridges since.
UNITED STATES – JANUARY 26: The Golden Gate Bridge, 1933-1937, architect Joseph Baermann Strauss, and the bay of San Francisco, California. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
The Golden Gate Bridge opened, remarkably, in May 1937, little greater than 4 years after San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi and Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District board president William P. Filmer turned the primary pile of filth with ceremonial golden spades.
President Herbert Hoover despatched a telegram of congratulations to rejoice the event.
The Golden Gate Bridge symbolized the audacious daring of American spirit even amid world financial calamity.
Built in the course of the Great Depression, the Golden Gate Bridge symbolized the audacious daring of American spirit even amid world financial calamity.
Cincinnati native, part-time poet and bridge fanatic Joseph Baermann Strauss was the chief engineer of the colossal venture.
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He was a diminutive powerhouse of a person, barely constructed and standing simply 5 toes 3 inches tall. Still, he tried out for the University of Cincinnati soccer crew, the place he was injured badly, whereas being voted class president and sophistication poet by his school classmates.
“Strauss was a prolific engineer, constructing some 400 drawbridges across the U.S. He dreamed of building ‘the biggest thing of its kind that a man could build,” PBS American Experience writes.
Picture dated Oct. 1935 of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the San Francisco Bay, throughout construction. The construction started on Jan. 5, 1933, and the bridge was inaugurated on May 27, 1937, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who pushed a button in Washington, D.C., signaling the official begin of auto site visitors over the bridge. The thought of engineer Joseph Strauss, it was the most important suspension bridge in the world. (AFP through Getty Images)
“In 1919, San Francisco’s city engineer, Michael O’Shaughnessy, approached Strauss about bridging the Golden Gate. Strauss caught fire with the idea, campaigning tirelessly over the next decade to build the bridge.”
PBS provides, “In November 1930, a year into the Great Depression, voters at last supported a bond issue for Strauss’ bridge. The ambitious project finally had its green light.”
His plans included an revolutionary life-saving measure: a security internet suspended below the ground of the bridge.
“The net proved an invaluable precaution as it saved the lives of 19 men,” notes History.com. “These men became known as members of the ‘Half-Way-to-Hell Club.’ Despite such safety measures, 11 men died during the bridge’s construction.”
The Golden Gate Bridge is only one of a number of of America’s most unbelievable feats of artwork, structure and engineering constructed in the course of the Great Depression.
It’s joined on that record by the Empire State Building, Hoover Dam and Mount Rushmore, amongst different buildings that assist outline the American panorama right this moment.
An aerial view of the Golden Gate Bridge is seen with fog in San Francisco, California, on October 29, 2021. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency through Getty Images)
The Golden Gate Bridge combines, maybe higher than every other bridge in the world, beautiful architectural magnificence with essential transportation necessity.
It’s beautiful golden-orange shade is formally often called International Orange. It displays the twin meanings of the colour gold in The Golden State.
The strait now often called the Golden Gate earned its identify from explorer and U.S. Army officer John C. Fremont in 1846, who thought-about the passage “a golden gate to trade with the Orient.”
Just two years later, gold was found in Sutter’s Mill, close to Sacramento, about 140 miles northeast of the Golden Gate. The valuable metallic discover impressed the California Gold Rush and fueled San Francisco’s rise as a significant American metropolis.
Monument to Joseph Baermann Strauss (Cincinnati, 1870-Los Angeles, 1938), chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the bridge in the background, San Francisco, California. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)
The non-native inhabitants of California grew from about 1,000 to 100,000 in 1849 alone.
The San Francisco Bay Area right this moment boasts a inhabitants of almost 8 million folks, making it one of many 5 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.
The metro space consists of Oakland to the east of the bay and San Jose to the south of the bay.
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The Golden Gate Bridge kinds a essential transportation viaduct for the area. The bridge is a phase of each U.S. Highway 101, the longest remaining pre-Interstate U.S. route in the nation, and California Route 1, recognized popularly because the Pacific Coast Highway.
The bridge itself is a significant American vacationer attraction, drawing about 10 million guests yearly.
Strauss died on May 16, 1938 — simply 11 days shy of the one-year anniversary of the bridge’s opening to the general public.
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He wrote a poem in tribute to the bridge, “The Mighty Task is Done,” quickly after its completion.
“On its broad decks in rightful pride/The world in swift parade shall ride/Throughout all time to be/Beneath, fleet ships from every port/vast landlocked bay, historic fort/And dwarfing all — the sea.”
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